


Closure

by Gabrieldiedforoursins



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Gen, I suck at tags, sorry - Freeform, warlock and adam become friends, warlock with powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21883570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabrieldiedforoursins/pseuds/Gabrieldiedforoursins
Summary: What were the consequences of two celestial entities raising a child for so long? What were the consequences of them leaving?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Warlock Dowling & Adam Young
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50
Collections: Oh Come All Ye Sinful! A Depraved Holiday Exchange 2019





	Closure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tacocatjones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacocatjones/gifts).



> For Tacocatjones! I'm not the best writer of actual scenes and dialogue. Most of my fics are thinky or introspective. And this one follows suit. Regardless, I hope you like it! And have a happy holiday season!

It was shortly after the boy turned six that Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis left the Dowling estate. They had resigned together, and it was only through being a moody and petulant child,upset at the loss of the two grownups that seemed to actually care, that Warlock noticed them slip into a black car together from his bedroom window.

The years went by, and Warlock’s moods only grew worse. That wasn’t entirely his fault though. The high turnover rate of the estate staff, the lack of presence from either of his parents really, and just sheer boredom, took its toll. The most entertainment the boy had had in a long while was his eleventh birthday, and even that had been a train wreck. The magician, while looking mildly familiar, was a disaster, trying tricks that had no business being performed in that century. It wasn’t even a good fake mustache. It looked like the man had stolen his mum’s eyeliner pencil, or maybe even a sharpie, and hastily threw on the black curlicues. The party quickly turned around, however, when a guard was irresponsible with the security of his gun. At least, that’s what the official statement to the parents, and the reason given to the guard for his firing. In reality, Warlock had simply, reached. Hoped that no one would notice him. And no one had. Until he pointed it, and water spurted from the tip. He was pretty sure he wasn’t behind that though.

The following months were some of the strangest in Warlock’s life. His family took a vacation to what was one of the dullest places he had ever been. A man that smelled frighteningly like death, though he may have simplified it some when he said ‘poo’, had tried to talk to him and his family about voices? In his head? But despite strange happenings, voices weren’t one that the young boy had experienced. Things just sort of, worked out for him. Came easy, though with no sort of consistency, and with no real benefit. His parents still struggled, with him and each other.

  
  
And then there were dreams. Strange dreams. Dreams of fish falling from the sky, of flaming car. Just bits and pieces really. Nothing that really made any sense to him. But they were different from most dreams of an eleven year old boy in the way of how real they felt. He’d wake up anxious and uneasy, though he wouldn’t tell anyone that. It’d all be brushed off as nonsense. If only his nanny had been there still, as embarassing a thought that was. Seriously, he was eleven, practically grown up? Who needed a nanny at eleven? It wasn’t so much that he needed the woman, more as that Nanny would have been the only one to have listened to him talk about the nightmares and the feelings with any sort of compassion or understanding. She always told him he’d grow up to rule the world, and to crush other’s beneath his feet. She probably would have told him he was having dreams of his own created apocalypse or something along those lines.

After the Dowling family moved state side, the strange things following Warlock were shoved to the back of his mind. He didn't really think on them any more. There were no nightmares plaguing him, no thoughts of destruction, no anxiety in the middle of the night. The basic things that were 'different' for a young boy though were lingering. He was able to make friends far easier than he wanted. Sure, he was the son of a prominent government official. Other kids would ask him if he'd been on Air Force One, or met the president, how big his house in England had been, what it was like having tutors homeschooling and such. After a few years of asking the teachers to not bring that background up during icebreakers though, and those types of conversations died down. But the other kids still flocked to him. The others listened to him. He didn't know if they knew they were listening though. They'd look at him, nod at all the right times, be perfectly agreeable, but they never really seemed to offer any input. It made him sad. He wanted genuine friends. But, he supposed, some company was better than none, and even if that company was robotic in nature.

He excelled in school, throwing himself into learning. Warlock wanted to make it into a good college, not that there was any doubt that he'd make it into wherever he pleased with his status and family. He could have been ecstatic about that particular privilege. But despite being spoiled by absent parents who thought that money would make up for lack of presence, the boy, well, young man at this point, had the desire to prove himself. He wanted to prove himself to himself. When the world had a way of making it so that things came easily to him, he had the want to accomplish things without the added privileges afforded to him. In some small way, he wanted to make people proud of him because he legitimately impressed them, not just because for some reason, there was a magnetism to him. (People would go on to tell him that he would have excelled in politics given the blind following that seemed to rally behind him, but the idea of pretending to care about others while using them? Despite his involvement and limited knowledge of government, it really didn't appeal to him.)

The boy flourished in college though. Grades might not have been perfect, and he wasn't a teacher's pet by any stretch of the word, but he was becoming his own person. He ended up meeting another teen with his same birthday while there as well. A boy named Adam. It was rivalry at first sight between the two really. They weren't top students, there wasn't any real benefit to the competition, other than the entertainment of having someone who wasn't complacent to influence to bounce ideas off of. Turned out that Adam had had a strange childhood as well. Strange dreams, voices, and he revealed once while a bit tipsy at a party with Warlock, that there had been powers as well, and an averted apocalypse. 

Warlock never outright said he believed him about any of it, not really. But it did make him wonder about why he had still had the strange dreams and such, if he hadn't been the one that was the, well, the anti-Christ, of all things, as Adam said. What had caused him his powers? Because there had to have been something. There had been all of the strange circumstances surrounding him since he was born. Like the hospital burning soon after he was taken home from it. The seemingly random summons to the middle east where the poo-man had been. The abundance of 'friends' and chances he got, his luck with being able to snag things from people and places he shouldn't have been able to. It was very similar to Adam's stories, though not to quite the extremes, if Warlock trusted the tales.

He almost had himself convinced that none of it had happened at all, that it was a trauma response or the result of an active mind with no outlet by the time he and Adam were graduating. Their rivalry had been a friendship for the better part of the four years they were in school. And at graduation, Adam introduced Warlock to a couple of people that he'd been in touch with since he was eleven.

The red hair and dark glasses were what caused Warlock's carefully built walls of repression around the memories to crash to pieces. That was definitely Nanny. The accent was different, but the slight sway to this person's walk, and the way that this person had to hold themselves back when being introduced from saying Warlock's name without being prompted, confirmed it. By Adam's accounts, this person, and the softer looking man besides them, were the celestial entities that helped with stopping the end from coming. Which meant these two were the ones who practically raised him. Who doted on him. Who seemingly cared until they left. 

They would have deserved a righteous rant, or some sort of scolding. But Warlock couldn't manage to do that. Not when Nanny, well, Crowley now, he supposed, looked at him over the top of their sunglasses, and cracked a smile. Not when Brother Francis, or rather Aziraphale, snagged his hand and shook it, beaming like a proud mother, and congratulating him on the accomplishment of graduating. That anger quickly deflated, and he smiled. He now had answers, closure, and a sort of family in the form of the anti-Christ and two beings that were neither angel or demon at this point. 

He also had a degree, and several thousands of dollars in student loans, but well, that was besides the point.


End file.
